It’s a new week and I’ve always liked them the others do not always like Mondays. Well enough already about the others I’ll let them be I can only imagine what they could say about me sitting for hours in a wooden shed with an extension cord or the campfire I make to cook food instead of buying a proper grill or any of the other dozens of peccadillos in my life that I prefer—yes I prefer it the hard way so much more interesting yes yes the ice I prefer my little plastic trays I refill and refill and refill and yes yes I like my wire basket in the sink drain catching the little bits I’ve no need for a garbage disposal and my chickens look forward to all my family’s food scraps… yes you see I’ve a clothesline and too many chickens to count and I do the work around here because I like to I don’t think too much convenience is a good thing no no I think one must suffer yes Imust suffer to deserve my life and Hemingway agreed:
Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan. “I’ve got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I’m willing to carry it,” Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not speak again. (Hemingway: Big Two-Hearted River)
I read these Hemingway stories when I was just a young man just a boy yes yes a freshman in high school barely fourteen. And these stories meant everything to me then but even though they meant everything to me I knew I was just a boy and everything for a boy was very small there will be many more important things soon… And over two decades later no there was nothing more important everything I learned everything I am is because of the boy I was yes the great masculine literature American and Irish made me who I am and I know that now and I’m grateful for it.
Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use―silence, exile, and cunning. (Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
I was a boy and my anger was magnificent.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. (Thoreau: Walden)
And I didn’t perform well in school and when I think back on it I don’t know how I made it through because I don’t remember doing homework or studying for exams I just showed up and let the chips fall. And I had never thought that I was much of a reader but I remember these books as clearly as if I were reading them now…
D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. All I know about it is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. (Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye)
And it’s Monday and there’s much to do yes yes I’ve started to climb the mountain and boy there’s so much rock to scale and my arms and hands and fingers are burning and burning and burning and I love it tearing me to shreds I wouldn’t have it any other way. And that’s enough now. Yes I think that’s enough. It's enough it’s enough it’s enough.